Book Review: A Phenomena Based Physics - Volume I May 01 2018

Waldorf Publications just redesigned the cover of the classic book for sixth-grade physics teachers: A Phenomena-Based Physics, Volume I (Volumes II and III are for seventh and eighth-grade teachers respectively). Manfred von Makensen devoted his life to the study and teaching of science. This first volume of this three-part series pays tribute to this lifetime of devoted study and experimentation.

Book Review: The Invisible Boat and the Molten Dragon April 20 2018

One genuinely marvelous thing about this second book in Eric Mueller’s Invisible Boat series is the steady stream of pictures of how nature looks behind the curtain of beauty we see. The creatures and the palaces, and the gardens and the light, are all resplendent with imaginations that ring true and lift the heart with a feeling of what’s happening on this living Earth of ours!

These pictures are charming, sometimes breathtaking, and ofttimes startling. Through these images, we are drawn closer to the earth.

Book Review: Painting at School April 16 2018

Dick Bruin and Attie Lichthart have devoted their lives to painting and the teaching of painting. In their new book, Painting at School, they express a deep understanding of color and joyful devotion to painting and its value in the lives of individuals, especially in children.

Their original work, now almost twenty years in the world, Painting in Waldorf Schools, is still rich with insights about painting as soul food for children (and adults) and valuable in its suggestions about approaching painting lessons. The original book came with a CD of paintings.

Book Review: Entry Points: A Guide to Rudolf Steiner's 'Study of Man' December 08 2017

Entry Points: A Study Guide to Rudolf Steiner’s Study of Man
In 2003-2004, when eBooks were launched, before any test marketing or forethought, and eBook readers were “the new best thing” with Nooks and Kindles competing for the “best Christmas present of the year,” the word was that books were a thing of the past. Books were so “yesterday.” But books are holding steady.  Maybe it is because reading a book holds an 85% comprehension and retention rate while reading eBooks (any screens, really), comprehension drops to 34% on average.

Book Review: Towards the Deepening of Waldorf Education October 19 2017

In the 1980s and early 1990s, The Pedagogical Section Council of North America worked closely with the Pedagogical Section in Dornach, Switzerland, to develop a publication that gathered the esoteric material Rudolf Steiner gave to the Waldorf teachers in the first Waldorf school in his first training lectures and along the way at teachers’ meetings. The book was beautiful and lovingly compiled.  It had a linen hard cover with gold leafing for the title.

Book Review: Willibrord - A Wandering Saint in Dialog with His Friends October 02 2017

This new book by Frans Lutters, experienced Waldorf teacher from Holland, Willibrord, A Wandering Saint in Dialog with his Friends, holds great potential for teachers and parents looking for the right mood for story telling with seven and eight year olds.

Teachers and parents of second graders face the delicious challenge of filling eager young souls with rich ideas filled with ideals in a right way. In Waldorf schools, the teacher’s efforts of forming a class in grade one settles over the summer months and second graders arrive ready for good stories and new knowledge.

Book Review: The Dynamic Heart and Circulation September 13 2017

Edited by Craig Holdrege
Reviewed by Ronald Koetzsch

 

Most of us learned in high school biology that the human heart is a four-chambered mechanical pump. The size of a fist, it sends blood to the lungs to be oxygenated and then sends the returning oxygen-rich blood throughout the body in the roughly 60,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. Even considered only as a mechanical pump, the heart is amazing. The heart beats, without ceasing, about 72 times a minute, over 4,000 times in an hour, about 100,000 times in the course of a day, 365,000,000 times in a year, and about 24 billion times in the course of an average lifetime!

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Book Review: The Moon Prince and the Sea August 21 2017

Waldorf graduates like Daniela Rose Anderson often carry a global consciousness.  They often volunteer for service in unlikely places with the greatest needs. Daniela did such volunteering and came to know a boy named Sumit and a girl named Marina Both were very young and both had terminal leukemia. The heart of Daniela linked the two hearts of the children who shared the same illness from faraway places.Save

Book Review: Award Winning "Helping Children on Their Way" August 16 2017

Waldorf Publications is proud to be recognized by Mom’s Choice Awards with Helping Children on Their Way

Elizabeth Auer has assembled a remarkable group of educators to write about many aspects of supporting children in their different and varied “stuck places” along the road to a balanced development for life.

Book Review: Earth Science July 17 2017

By Hans-Ulrich Schmutz, PhD
Reviewed by Ronald Koetzsch

Many Waldorf parents and Waldorf teachers regret that they themselves did not receive a Waldorf education. But parts of the Waldorf curriculum can be studied and experienced at any age. Earth Science, by Hans-Ulrich Schmutz, although meant as a guide for Waldorf high school science teachers, gives any rueful adult the opportunity to work through the rich Waldorf earth science curriculum for grades nine through twelve.

Book Review: At Home in Harmony: Bringing Families and Communities Together in Song ~ New Release June 29 2017

Meg Chittenden’s new book,  At Home in Harmony, Bringing Families and Communities Together in Song is both artistic and magical. The volume is beautiful, from the clean, bright cover to the charmingly illustrated pages of sheet music, to the quick anecdotes about every song. Her goal is to make it easy to learn songs and to add harmonies that can also be absorbed and then sung again and again as accompaniment to life. Singing is so much more beautiful when it harmonizes in a round or when a simple harmony can make a song that is fresh and simple, blossom like a rose in marvelous harmony.

Book Review: The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education ~ New Release June 24 2017

The Pedagogical Section Council of North America has produced for us another beautiful book to help in understanding the esoteric basis of Waldorf Education,
The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education (Waldorf Publications, 2017, 124 pages, $24).

The Pedagogical Section Council developed the seven, essential elements that make a school truly a Waldorf school.  Pedagogical Section Council members then took up elaborating on each of these principles, the essays written were published in the Research Bulletin over a couple of years, and then the essays were gathered with a few additional treatises on the principles and made into this fine book explaining what makes a Waldorf school a Waldorf school.

Book Review: The Falconer June 11 2017

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Book Review: Difficult Children – There is No Such Thing May 16 2017

Today "difficult children"—children with attention deficit disorder, high levels of anxiety, restlessness, aggressiveness, and other emotional and behavioral problems — are a major challenge for parents, educators. and therapists. Once the child has been diagnosed and labeled as having ADD or autism or some other condition, the standard approach is to use psychotherapy and/or psychotropic drugs to change behavior. Millions of children today, for example, take the drug Ritalin for attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity.  Continue reading...

 

Book Review: Active Arithmetic! and Math Lessons for Elementary Grades April 28 2017

Are you concerned about your child’s math skills?  Are you wondering how to bring a math idea to your class in an unusual, memorable way?  These books are indispensable! Perhaps the best thing about these books is that they turn your mind from the drier approaches to teaching arithmetic, and open the faucet of your own imaginative ideas for teaching math.

Traditional Tales Retold by Kelly Morrow April 20 2017

Lazy Jack; King Thrushbeard; The Prince and the Dragon; and Sylvain and Jocosa

When class teacher Kelly Morrow’s search for first readers appropriate and challenging for her students proved fruitless, she created her own. The four little books range from 18 to 38 pages. Each book tells a folk story in a simple, clear, but interesting way, and each story is enriched by a moral truth. The cover of each is an engaging color illustration, and there are black and white drawings throughout.

Book Review: Liputto ~ Stories of Gnomes and Trolls March 30 2017

The first few stories in this collection recount the exploits of a disagreeable troll, who ensnares unsuspecting creatures – a goldfish, butterflies – in his net and keeps them in his dark cave; other animals help to free the captives. Then begins the story, in short chapters, of Liputto, a gnome whose job it is to bring drops of sunlight deep into the earth; after seven years of work, he is awarded a kind of sabbatical, to explore for a year.

Book Review: Three Plays for Small Classes March 24 2017

Three Plays for Small Classes offers class teachers an inspiring start at approaches to drama with only a few in middle school. Vivian Jones-Schmidt demonstrates her Waldorf class teaching experience in the ingenious re-telling of profound tales through the scripts she offers. Drama is a source of endless redemption for pre-teens and for students of all ages, really.

Book Review: Second Grade Development, Observation, and Assessment March 06 2017

Over the decades of developing and deepening of Waldorf Education, teachers have come to recognize the need for attention as children approach the change in consciousness that occurs around nine years old. Much has been said about this change. Waldorf Publications’ book Rubicon, is a collection of everything Rudolf Steiner said about this significant moment in a child’s development.

There’s No Minute Like the Last Minute! December 16 2016

Waldorf Publications and the Research Institute for Waldorf Education have many fine possibilities for thoughtful gifts when thoughtfulness in the hectic season becomes hard to muster.

Consider the caliber and depth of some of these gifts — remember, books and subscriptions keep giving long into the future!

Book Review: Solving the Riddle of the Child: the Art of the Child Study by Christof Wiechert January 25 2016

The very essence of Waldorf education lives in the Child Study. Observing the children is primary task of every Waldorf teacher. The entire curriculum should be formed out of this child observation practice and new organs of perception are developed from this practice. This is why Rudolf Steiner was so insistent about administration being done by those who are with the children every day, not by others who have nothing directly to do with teaching the children. The real revolution lives in this open secret of Waldorf education: that the observation of children is the heart of the curriculum…     Read More...

The highly anticipated new release is finally here ~ The Sun with Loving Light March 16 2015

This new Waldorf reader, The Sun With Loving Light, was assembled as a transliteration of the original reader, Der Sonne Licht, in the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany.  Caroline von Heydebrand was the original collector who put the Waldorf reader together for those children in that inaugural school.  In the United States in the 1950s, the New York City Rudolf Steiner School did a transliteration and named it The Key to the Kingdom, now out of print.  Hansjoerg Hofrichter in Germany has since resurrected and republished the original reader and wished mightily, being a Waldorf graduate with clear memories of the book as his own first reader, that similar readers could be made for children in Waldorf schools around the world, in the language of every country that has a Waldorf school.